


After All The Lights Have Burnt Out

by tealmoon



Series: Yesterday's Dreams [2]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Underfell, Angst, Implied Sexual Coercion, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 19:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6297715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tealmoon/pseuds/tealmoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, all the love and LOVE in the world aren't enough to save someone. Sans tries to cope as best he can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After All The Lights Have Burnt Out

            After so many years of living in the rotting Underground, Sans should have learned about subterfuge and plotting, yet he always found himself surprised after every attack. Or maybe he just allowed himself to become lazy in yet another way—it was Papyrus's burden to think about, not his. Someone must have known he was on-duty in Hotland, far enough away that the gossip would never reach him, far enough that he wouldn’t hear the screams. He had dozed off in the heat and didn’t think about his brother, didn’t feel his soul contracting in pain. Someone had planned this for weeks.

            And Sans could not have been more ignorant. He lingered at his station, he teleported to Grillby’s instead of home, he kept smiling even as every person in the bar turned to look at him. Were they afraid? Confused? Only Grillby stayed expressionless, waving Sans to the bar counter. He poured out a shot and slid it over to Sans. His grin tightened a bit; he already knew he didn’t have enough gold, and from a glance, it looked like a bottle of the nice stuff, which could cost a third of his month’s wages in a single shot, if the bartender was feeling stingy. And Grillby had already poured it out, so Sans couldn’t refuse. He immediately started rummaging in his pockets for what little gold he had, already imagining _alternate payments_ , when Grillby shook his head.

            “Only the one,” Grillby said in his crackling whisper. “You need to go. But come back if there’s no other option.” Sans drained the shot and waited to hear more, but Grillby turned away and busied himself with someone else’s order.

            It still didn’t sink in, not as Sans stepped outside and the residents of Snowdin darted inside their houses as he passed or else stood silently watching. It seemed like the whole town was holding its breath, just because of him. Usually they only viewed Papyrus with that much dread, and if they were afraid of Sans, it was mostly by association.

            The wood covering their front window had been torn away, tossed all the way to the far tree line. The glass had been broken for years, after Undyne had thrown Papyrus through it. He had failed his very first assassination attempt on her, and she had taken her disappointment out on him (and the window), as Sans huddled at the top of the stairs and didn’t say anything or call attention to himself. Even though they had to replace the wood every few months (splintered by bones, lit on fire, rotting from the constant snow and ice), it was safer and sturdier than glass in the long run.

            It was a gaping wound in the front of their house, and Sans could see the TV smashed inside and the couch overturned. The door was open, just a crack, but that was enough. Papyrus always kept it locked and sometimes even left the chain on, so that Sans would have to pound at the door and beg, or teleport in, though it usually happened at the end of his shifts, when even the idea of another teleport made him collapse in exhaustion.

            He nudged it open with the toe of his shoe, after running his fingers over the fresh claw marks left in the wood. The lock had been broken off and, as he walked in, he accidentally kicked it across the room and into the kitchen. The entirety of the first floor was a disaster, the furniture broken, the walls gouged and burnt, tiny sprays of dust visible against the dark carpet. Papyrus’s scarf lay forgotten on the carpet, and he picked it up, numbly evaluating the new rips. Everything reeked of bones and the sharp ozone that came from using a Gaster blaster. It was so overpowering that he had to strain to catch the smell of wet dog.

            It must have been a coup, he finally realized, spotting one of the dogs’ axes embedded in the fridge. The canine guards had never liked Papyrus—he rose the ranks too quickly and refused to bow down to their collective might. What use was a skeleton against an entire family of dogs, other than being a chew toy, they howled. They must have attacked as a group. Papyrus was just fine defending against them solo or in pairs, but alone in a crowded environment, exhausted and outnumbered and caught off guard… Sans fumbled for his phone, as if he had missed a message, but of course Papyrus hadn’t called him for help.

            “Boss!” Sans called up the stairs. “Papyrus?” He started counting dust piles, wondering how many dogs his brother had killed this time, when he felt a slight twinge in his soul, like a glancing needle prick. “Papyrus!” He shouldn’t have yelled with the whole town listening outside, but he couldn’t help it.

            At the top of the stairs, where the banister had been broken, there was another dust pile, and Sans moved his hand out before his thoughts could catch up. He lifted up a pinch of it, the softest thing he had ever felt in his life, and it smelled like bones and pasta sauce and clean snow, not like the blackened slush they had in town. It was ridiculous to think the dust actually smelled like anything—it was just dust, but it was Papyrus _._ His spindly, obnoxious brother had become so small and quiet.

            Maybe he had been retreating, though Sans mentally revised that to _regrouping_ , which sounded less cowardly. Papyrus must have headed up the stairs for a reprieve, to catch his breath. Someone was probably guarding the door, so maybe he was headed to the balcony or a window, some way to get outside, to a better battlefield. One of the dogs had followed behind, and…

            There wasn’t a second dust pile on the stairs to suggest that Papyrus had struck down his killer in his final moments. Whoever it was managed to survive, and it was Sans’s duty to correct that. Instead, he just slumped beside his brother, his bones quietly rattling against each other. What was he going to do? Monster funerals went out of fashion well before their time, and people were usually too busy trying to survive to spare much thought for the dead. He’d seen people throw dust into the river, scrape what they could into a jar, or even sweep it into the snow like it was nothing. For a minute, he considered eating a fistful, like in a human fairytale where the survivor gained the fallen’s power through their blood and meat. Maybe it would make him brave. But he could already hear Papyrus’s hypothetical complaints. _“Sans! That is absolutely disgusting. You are not some babybones that puts everything he sees into his mouth. And it’s just like you to take the easiest route to try and improve yourself.”_

Instead, he scooped up as much of the dust as he could, though some of it had been ground too deeply into the carpet. He held it close for a moment, mindful not to get any tears in it; Papyrus would have surely backhanded him for crying by now. Sans took a deep breath, tilted his skull back, and dropped the dust over his head. It stung as it fell into his eye sockets, and his magic flared, as it always did to protect him against intrusions into his skull. He forced it back and let Papyrus’s dust coat the inside of his head. The rest settled on his clothing and wouldn’t linger as long, but at least he could keep a measure of it that couldn’t be washed or blown away.

            It felt like he sat there for hours at the top of the stairs, but he eventually managed to move, one laborious step at a time. He boarded up the window again and dragged the sofa in front of the door to barricade it, with the lock in too many pieces to fix. All of that with magic, of course, because he spent the remainder of his physical energy to stay standing, at least until the house was sealed and no one was peering in at him from outside.

            The house was so quiet without Papyrus, and it felt so much bigger. He knew what he was supposed to do: slaughter all of the surviving canine guards, and their parents and puppies as well. And then, report to Undyne that half of her guard, including her star pupil, had been wiped out. Maybe that act of slaughter would see him promoted, and wouldn’t Papyrus have been pleased that he was finally taking some initiative?

            Sans did none of it. Exhausted, he headed back to the stairs, though he gave up walking after the first few steps and began to crawl, the carpet burning against his kneecaps. At the top step, he paused to place a reverent hand on the dust he hadn’t managed to scrape up, before he crawled on.

            He opened Papyrus’s door with magic rather than trying to reach up to the doorknob and inched his way into the room. He had expected it to look different, somehow, as if its owner’s death would have put it into disarray. But Papyrus’s books were untouched, his bed precisely made, everything in its place and meticulously clean. Clearly none of his attackers had bothered to go in, let alone looting anything. Clutching the scarf in his hand, Sans climbed onto his brother’s bed, curled up on top of the blankets, and let sleep overtake him.

            The banging on the door a few hours later didn’t fully wake him, and he continued to doze, face mashed into the pillow, faintly drooling. It was Papyrus’s job to deal with those kinds of disturbances, and he wasn’t going to let go of sleep unless something bodily tore him from it. The smoke a few minutes later did the trick, and he shot up, nearly tumbling from the bed.

            He knew that they’d come back, he’d be an idiot to think otherwise, but it felt too soon. Sans wasn’t done with the house, but they were burning it down around him regardless.

            He scrambled to his feet and turned to the bookshelf, pulling aside cookbooks and texts on military strategy to find their meager savings hidden in a recess in the wall. And then, over to the desk, where his brother’s wages from last month were sitting in the top drawer. There wasn’t any point to agonizing over his physical possessions, unless he wanted to burn or collapse from smoke. Sans only needed the gold and his brother’s scarf, which he looped around his neck.

            He could hear triumphant howls outside, as the first wisp of smoke snuck under the door. If he tried to save the house somehow, they’d be on him in a second. He opened a shortcut and tried his best not to look back.

*

            Sans landed in a knee-deep snowdrift, cursing to himself in a whisper. It wasn’t one of his best teleports, but it was far enough into the woods that no one was likely to stumble over him as he got himself sorted out. He managed to wade over to a drier patch of rocks and sat down to shake the snow out of his sneakers as he considered his options.

            If he stayed a sentry, it’d leave him open to the dogs’ attacks and Undyne’s wrath. (He considered calling her again, but she probably already knew, and if not, he didn’t want to break the news.) Nor did he want to try to fill his brother’s position. He could head back to Hotland, to try and become Alphys’s assistant. Sans certainly had the credentials, even if they were a decade out of date, but the Royal Scientist had gone over the edge. He didn’t want to become an unwilling subject for the experiments he had heard whispers of while patrolling in Hotland. And even if he survived her, working for Alphys would gather Asgore’s attention, which would certainly end in him being maimed or killed.

            Sans could stay with Grillby. He had already offered, and Sans would be safer there than anywhere else. If he warmed the bartender’s bed occasionally (he snickered to himself) and earned his keep, Grillby would let him stay and maybe even protect him. Sans could become a decent bouncer, and his magic was strong enough to toss people out without needing to touch them. Or, hell, Grillby could even tart him up in a tiny skirt and heels and make him serve drinks, and it’d probably be less humiliating than staying a sentry. It wouldn’t be the worst life.

            He was so tempted that it physically hurt to take a shortcut to Waterfall rather than the bar. If the dogs actually cared enough to confirm whether they had killed him (how would they be able to identify dust in a burnt down house?), they wouldn’t be able to track him so easily after he waded through a half dozen rivers. Keeping an eye out for Undyne and rabid Temmies, he trudged through Waterfall, wondering if the news had reached there by now. Did the monsters of Waterfall know that the Terrible Papyrus had been killed? Did they care? Several minutes of walking and one quick teleport up across the cliffs, and he found his destination. Sans had found the tiny cave back when he was a babybones, and even if Papyrus had known about it, the entrance was small enough that he would have never fit. It had another security measure in the few Echo Flowers growing in the back: if they held any voices other than his, Sans would know his hideout had been compromised. It wasn’t foolproof, but he felt safe enough there when he heard his own voice from a few months ago, snarling about how Papyrus had kicked him out _again,_ and he quickly stuttered wingdings into it, just nonsense to erase that memory before it could gain traction in his mind.

            In the early morning, a few hours before the false dawn when the crystals in the cavern ceiling began to glow, Sans returned to the outskirts of Snowdin, teleporting as close to Greater Dog’s tiny doghouse as he could, so no one would hear his footsteps. His eyes flared red in the dark, and he raised a hand, a quartet of blasters rising around him. As the doghouse disintegrated under the combined blasts, he was already teleporting away to Lesser Dog, and then Dogamy and Dogaressa up on the hill. He couldn’t tell if there was anyone in each darkened little house—he didn’t care enough to check, as long as he had left them as smears on the snow. It was faster and cleaner than they deserved, but he didn’t have the time or the inclination to drag it out.     

            It was a different matter altogether when he headed back into town. The blasts had woken people, and lights were starting to flicker on as he walked. The dogs that didn’t serve in the guard, the ones too young or too old to do so, all lived together, in an enormous house in the middle of town. As people watched from their windows, he walked up to the mailbox and considered it. He didn’t want to parade his blasters around for the town to see, and he didn’t have enough energy to anyway, so he gestured at the house in front of him, opting for a flashier approach.

            Hundreds of red-tinged bones burst out of the ground below the house, piercing it at every possible angle, enormous femurs and tibias and ribs breaking through the roof and windows. He had to be sure, so he kept summoning more and more bones, leaving the house an enormous pin cushion, smashing everything inside. As a dog shoved away the remains of the front door and tried to scramble outside, he sent a radius hurtling through their throat, turning them to dust before they even hit the ground. The house began to collapse in on itself, and he cut down the few dogs that managed to crawl out of the wreckage. From the few whimpers he could hear, he didn’t need to bother with the rest that were being crushed under the debris.

            “Guess I really...threw those dogs a bone,” Sans whispered to himself under his breath, and he couldn’t help but laugh, even though it wasn’t funny, even though there was no one to hear the pun. He had expected to feel something as his LOVE increased, along with the familiar rush of his stats rising (except for his ever-stagnant HP), but he just felt like he was full of static, shaking quietly. Seeing the burnt husk of his house, still standing but hardly salvageable, didn’t inspire any emotions either. As Grillby emerged from the bar, the only person not hiding away in fear, his snickering finally trailed off into silence.

            He looked down at Sans without a word, his purple flames pushing back the dark. Sans imagined it: a life tied to the bar and its owner, the drinking, Grillby’s hands on him, his bones singed but never enough to kill him. He could survive that life, and maybe he would have been happy that way, sometimes.

            Instead, he shook his head, knowing that Grillby could overpower and claim him if he wanted to. Sans backed up a step, wondering if it was about to happen, if Grillby was going to make up for every stolen drink and meal, every time Sans had pushed his hands away or tried to say no. But Grillby merely touched Sans’s shoulder, leaving a tiny scorch mark on his jacket, and went back inside.

            Sans never saw him again.

*

            There was nothing left for Sans, nowhere to go, and when he stepped into a shortcut, not caring if anyone saw him vanish, he didn’t have a destination. Usually when he teleported, it was like he stepped into an enormous hallway, with an infinite number of doors. If he knew where he wanted to go, it would place him at the right door, and he just had to walk through it. But now, he wandered past each door, looking through the windows set in them and trying to decide if any of their locations appealed. Sans wasn’t used to staying in the void for so long, and the choices were starting to make him dizzy, as he passed doors leading to Hotland, to the Capital, to…

            His head snapped towards a door surrounded by shortcuts into the Ruins. For a brief second, he had seen a skeleton walking through the woods, and he immediately turned to the door, his Soul thrashing in his rib cage. There weren’t any other skeletons in the Underground.

            The shortcut blocked Sans, trying to push him away as other doors began to appear around him, tempting him to make a different choice. It seemed like his steps were getting heavier and the door farther away, as if he was moving through his own gravity magic. His vision blurred as he looked for another glimpse of trees and bones, ignoring everything else.

            When it seemed like the strain was about to grind him to dust, he stumbled past all the other doors and finally grabbed the doorknob, breathless and sweating. Sans couldn’t see Papyrus through the window anymore, but there were footprints left behind, trailing through the snow and out of sight. His brother was out there, and he didn’t let himself think about the dust coating his skull. Papyrus was in those woods, so Sans had to join him.

            …And the door was locked. Of all the fucking things that could have happened, the door was _locked_! He had never seen a shortcut barricade itself before; in the past, all of the Underground had been open to him. Once, Sans would have wanted to study it, to revise his theories around teleportation and maybe even conduct a full experiment. But Papyrus was behind that door, and he couldn’t think of anything else.

            He tried to pull it off its hinges and then break the window, both to no effect; bones and blue magic seemed to bounce off the door. He knew that ‘hallway with doors and windows’ was a metaphor that his mind had constructed to make sense of teleportation, and there wasn’t a physical door to destroy, but he tried anyway, even as his fists started to flake away as he slammed them into the door. He barely had enough energy to summon one final blaster, and it looked patchier than usual, parts of it glitching in and out of view. Even floating there seemed like a strain on it, and it clenched its fangs as it waited for his command.

            The Gaster blaster was enough. The force of the blast tore the door apart, and for a second, Sans saw what the shortcuts really looked like, before his mind went blank to protect itself. He collapsed into the tear he had made, and the blaster, with what little consciousness it had, grabbed the hood of his jacket and tried to slow his fall.

            When it finally lowered him into the snow, back in reality, he only managed to stay awake long enough to dismiss it, before falling asleep.

            Sans dreamt of his brother.

**Author's Note:**

> Even though this comes chronologically before Snow, I think I'd rather put them in this order. Hopefully the events here flow decently well into the first. 
> 
> Underfell is an awful place, fell Grillby is a huge creep, and there will probably be consequences for Sans tearing a hole in between dimensions. 
> 
> (Fell Gaster might get involved in the future, and it'll be really terrible.)


End file.
